Since about 2000, telephone fraud has greatly increased in Taiwan and furthermore has spread to mainland China in the last three years. As a result, total monetary loss and the number of victims of telephone fraud has consistently soared every year. In order to prevent the public from suffering telephone fraud, the superintending government agency in charge of telecommunication, the National Communications Commission of Taiwan (NCC), has promulgated a regulation that telecommunication companies and international Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are obliged to set up authenticating and blocking mechanism against overseas incoming telephone calls, for screening and blocking certain telephone numbers from specific caller identities.
However, due to the ever-changing techniques of telephone fraud, most telephone fraudsters can easily tamper with a telephone number of the caller ID device to be displayed on the callee display screen. A gangster or crime syndicate can easily cheat and evade the existing authenticating and blocking mechanisms applied to incoming overseas incoming telephone calls, which have been established by the telecommunication companies and ISPs by sending fake telephone numbers in the caller ID in order to masquerade as trustworthy entities such as a government agency, local court, regional prosecutor's office, or the like, to cause callee victims to suffer from caller ID spoofing once again.
Telephone fraud is a part of the communications fraud used to deceive users by viciously exploiting the usability of current web security technologies including the Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) telephony signaling protocol set, which is used to set up most of the world's public switched telephone network (PSTN) telephone calls. Currently, all overseas telephone transmissions carried by the telecommunication industries in every country are gradually being moved to networks for reducing transmission cost, so that the overseas telephone transmissions are blended with network transmissions. Therefore, the regulations of the National Communications Commission of Taiwan (NCC) to establish blocking technology against international telephone fraud have been ineffective in screening and blocking certain tampered telephone numbers of fraudsters, who use fake caller-ID data to give the appearance that calls come from overseas, such as from Mainland China, while actually having a domestic origin in Taiwan. Moreover, efforts at developing effective blocking technology have so far failed as a result of the following problems.
1. Invalid Filtering:
Because caller ID telephone numbers can easily be tampered with via current web technologies to allow caller ID spoofing by the fraudsters, the telephone fraud gangster or syndicate can effortlessly cheat and evade existing authenticating and blocking mechanism against incoming telephone call set up by the telecommunication companies and ISPs by arbitrarily changing the telephone number of the caller ID.
2. Undue Blocking:
Because the existing authenticating and blocking mechanism against incoming telephone call set up by the telecommunication companies and ISPs directly blocks any doubtful telephone call from any suspicious caller ID, some legal telephone calls might be wrongly blocked due to lack of a caller telephone number or an incomplete caller telephone number resulting from lack of a country code or the like, which might be misjudged as a fraudulent phone call so that it is improperly hindered.
3. Industry Protest:
As a result of the foregoing “undue blocking,” some harmful effects may subsequently be incurred. First, the number of customer complaints is increased, resulting in goodwill damage and escalation of customer service costs. Second, annual revenue of telephone transmissions is decreased. Accordingly, the telecommunication companies and ISPs have no incentive to enthusiastically cooperate with the National Communications Commission of Taiwan (NCC) and are reluctant to comply with the foregoing regulation stipulated by the National Communications Commission NCC.
4. Public Confusion:
For efficiency in preventing telephone fraud, comprehensive blocking of all doubtful telephone calls from any suspicious caller ID is the most effective way. However, the inconvenience of communication incurred by the above-mentioned “undue blocking” will disturb legitimate callers and callees alike. Contrarily, the good intention of the government in urging the Telecommunication Companies and ISPs to prevent telephone fraud easily becomes a source of people's grievances.
Accordingly, since telephone fraudsters continue to be equipped with network and cyber techniques for tampering with caller ID telephone numbers by masquerading as a trustworthy entity or government agency, the ordinary callee is unable to authenticate whether an incoming telephone call is genuine or a sham. Therefore, there is an urgent need for an effective authentication method and system for screening network caller ID spoofs and malicious phone calls without any of the problems mentioned above, so that the telecommunication companies and ISPs will be happy and willing to implement the system and method to practically preventing telephone fraud.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/699,330 (Publication number US2008/0181379) entitled “Caller Name Authentication to Prevent Caller Identity Spoofing” discloses a separate caller name authentication mechanism to perform user name authentication. However, this authentication mechanism requires triple redundant means to implement the authentication mechanism, meaning that a telecommunication company and ISP must set up an extra authentication system in addition to the existing telecommunication facility; the telecommunication user is required to set up an extra auxiliary authentication device in addition to the existing telephone facility; and in practice, an extra auxiliary authentication channel must be set up in addition to the existing telecommunication channel. This results in extra costs and problems with system compatibility and communication efficiency, with the result that the chance of adoption is unfavorable.
Therefore, there is still a need for an effective authentication method and system for screening network caller ID spoofs and malicious phone calls, which can be constructed using existing telecommunication facility infrastructure that does not require an extra auxiliary device to be set up in addition to the existing telephone facility for the user, and that also does not require an extra auxiliary channel to be set up in addition to the existing telecommunication channel, thereby providing a favorable economic effect, system compatibility and communication efficiency, to address a critical demand for practically preventing telephone fraud.
Furthermore, during practical implementation of an embodiment of the authentication method and system, there is an urgent need to prevent related information from leaking out due to negligence or internal bad management, or as a result of invasion by an external malignant group, so as to not only protect the privacy of client users from incurred fraud but also ensure that telecommunication information is protected against any theft.